Looking Around

For the rest of the week. There are times when the art critic life is like being a pony express rider. But I expect to be checking back in a day or two.


I had a brief talk recently with Laura Katzman, who was formerly an
associate professor of art at Randolph College and the director of
its museum studies program. In April, as it became apparent that Randolph
was thinking about selling some of its Maier Museum art collection to raise
money for its endowment and operating …

Let’s get back for a moment to financially troubled Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va., which has been thinking about selling or sharing some of the collection of its Maier Museum as a way to raise money. The school has asked a judge to determine whether the will of Louise Jordan Smith, who donated some of the Maier’s most valuable …

For the Love of God/Damien HIrst — Photo: Getty

Bloomberg’s Linda Sandler is reporting that Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull has been sold to a (so far) unnamed “investment group” for the $100 million that Hirst was asking. (Sandler’s story notes that The Art Newsaper reported recently that during discussions on the sale the …

Alice Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress who’s always on the hunt for artworks to fill her forthcoming Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., has jumped into the Fisk University sale. The story appeared first in The Tennessean. She’s offered to purchase a 50% share of Fisk’s Alfred Stieglitz bequest. That collection includes the …

Yesterday Mark Schwartz, an attorney representing the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, a non-profit group attempting to prevent the Barnes collection from being moved from its home in Merion, Pa. to Philadelphia, filed a petition in Montgomery County Orphan’s Court asking Judge Stanley Ott to rescind his earlier decision permitting the …

This morning the British daily The Guardian published a feature piece on Rem Koolhaas in which the oracular architect had this to say:

“The market economy thrives on spectacle and novelty,” says Koolhaas. “Its buildings are ever more dramatic. It offers the promise of total freedom, but in architecture this quickly leads to the danger

…

I belatedly made it yesterday to the Guggenheim’s summer show “The Shapes of Space”, where it would be safe to say one of the most popular pieces is Piotr Uklanski’s Untitled (Dance Floor). It’s one of those synchronized flashing disco dance floors. The wall card was careful to relate his work to everything from Mondrian to Carl Andre. …

Spc. Robert Acosta — Photo: Nina Berman

A New York gallery, Jen Bekman, has a powerful summer show of photographs by Nina Berman of wounded Iraq War veterans. You can find images here, and more of them in Berman’s book Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq and on her website. Holland Cotter has a review in today’s New York Times.

Along …

While I was on vacation, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority in San Francisco unveiled three competing plans for a new office tower and transit terminal that will be the tallest building in the city. For once all three schemes have something to be said for them.

There’s one by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill:

(Image courtesy SOM)

One by …

Last month, in a post I did about the death of the photo curator John Szarkowski, I mentioned that one of the best photography books I ever read was Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence by the photographer Tod Papageorge. The book is a brilliant rethinking of how Frank, in his masterpiece The Americans, came to grips …

The Lowdown, Murray, 2001 — Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Generalitat Valenciana

Ok, lets finish up the Elizabeth Murray train of thought I started Wednesday, about the extraordinary number of influences that went into producing her pictures.

At the Art Institute of Chicago, where Murray was a student in the late 1950s, she …

Mouse Cup, Elizabeth Murray, 1981-82 — Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson

Looking Around is in a looking around mood today. And I still have Elizabeth Murray on my mind. In the tribute to Murray that I wrote yesterday for Time.com, I called her a “brilliant synthesizer”. What I was thinking of there was her gift for …